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How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

atroche.org

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Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#131

Post by xerophtye »

md224 wrote: post #76
stephengillie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this what "deprogramming" a brainwashed person is? Moving them from the position of their captors' propaganda to a position within the propaganda believed by an entire society? Patriotism being one example of this type of propaganda -- the idea that some of us are better than others because we were born on one side of a line in the dirt.

This is why I find the concept of brainwashing/deprogramming fascinating from an epistemic perspective; you're essentially substituting one set of axioms for another. And it's often hard to determine who occupies the epistemic higher ground, since all camps will claim to do so. For example, liberals think Fox News is brainwashing people, and conservatives think academics at liberal schools are brainwashing people. So…

So the beauty of brainwashing/deprogramming is how you actually manage to substitute those axioms, even though they may actually lead them to disregard everything you say. That's like inception from the outside!

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#132

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rayiner wrote: post #27
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me give you a tl;dr: the North Koreans started it by rolling over into South Korea, McAuthur went too close to the Yalu in the counter attack, Chinese entered the war, Truman fires McAuthur. Stalement ensues, borders preserved, Kim Jong Un has ex-girlfriend executed. The communists of the 50s were busy starving their own people in great leaps forwards, in the 60s they innovated on that with a cultural revolution;…

I love the rationalization people have to use to explain China's economic success. If what Deng brought was capitalism, then Obama is an anarcho-libertarian.

Shenzhen and the Pearl Delta region...the Yangtze River delta region, they were all opened up as SEZs under Deng.

You can mostly thank DXP for all the cheap chinese junk that Walmart started selling in the 90s.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#133

Post by lostlogin »

DominikR wrote: post #115
comex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an opinion is being slowly but inexorably pushed on you from all sides by your captor over a long period of time, as part of an explicitly designed program of of propagandizing, it's brainwashing, regardless of the opinion's merit!

We do this all the time, for example to immigrants. We call this integration in europe, you might also call this learning/internalizing the right values or assimilation. And if I had to choose between that kind of Chinese brainwashing and Guantanamo/CIA black sites, I'll pick the Chinese option.

I'd take a good brain washing over torture too.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#134

Post by xerophtye »

DominikR wrote: post #112

I wouldn't categorize this as brainwashing. Or to be more specific: I wouldn't categorize the description in the blog post as brainwashing or torture. To me, this looks more like some kind of group therapy since the POWs were not forced and the example statement they were asked to make ("The United States is not perfect.") is obviously a fact because nothing is perfect. What I find interesting is to compare this to w…

Well i think that stems from a indoctrinated hatred towards the captives. If you think rationally (albeit coldly/mechanically) you'd figure out that torture isn't that effective. In fact torture just makes the captives hate you more. So that makes your job even harder.

But if you could shake their beliefs... Show them the error of their ways. And they actually might help you stop the other terrorists.

But all that needs that you actually see the captives as human beings.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#135

Post by xerophtye »

DominikR wrote: post #112

I wouldn't categorize this as brainwashing. Or to be more specific: I wouldn't categorize the description in the blog post as brainwashing or torture. To me, this looks more like some kind of group therapy since the POWs were not forced and the example statement they were asked to make ("The United States is not perfect.") is obviously a fact because nothing is perfect. What I find interesting is to compare this to w…

What I find interesting is that most terrorists are a product of brainwashing too. And i mean DELIBERATE brainwashing, not the kind of stuff you learn from society as you grow up. So why not fight fire with fire and deprogram them? Heck the violence actually reinforces their brainwashing that the captors are Evil people.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#136

Post by lostlogin »

philwelch wrote: post #97
stephengillie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We couldn't occupy them like we did Iraq? I just want to see Korea reunited.

All the countries that occupied Iraq agreed on how to rebuild the country. That wasn't the case in Korea. No one in South Korea wants to reunite Korea badly enough to live under a hereditary Stalinist dictatorship, nor does said dictatorship want to give up power, so the situation is at a stalemate.

umm.. a few of Americas lackeys came along for the ride as it was politically expedient. Despite this governments fell. Iraq was America's mess and a few unfortunates followed them on down. I'm not sure there was any agreement on rebuilding, it was, and still is a catastrophic mess. Nothing other than embarrassment should be felt over the humanitarian disaster this adventure was.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#137

Post by xerophtye »

stephengillie wrote: post #50
tokenadult wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem at the time was the Allied Powers (the Western non-Axis powers and the Soviet Union) were not united about how to resolve the issue of the sovereignty of Korea after the end of World War II. Germany was divided, over in Europe, for much the same reason, but there wasn't an invasion across the line of control between the Soviet occupied zone and the Western occupied zone in Germany, as there was an invasio…

To me, this sounds like "The neighbors were not united about which parent should get custody of the children when they divorced." I cannot fathom why we all would be involved in an internal dispute. And the USSRussia would have invaded western Europe...where the US & allies had set up many military bases? "Communism" was the "terrorism" of my parents' generation...

It's like this. You control half of a country. Your Rival controls the other half. Now you both announce to release your half to form a single country but who should rule? If you let your Rival decide, you can bet it's gonna be "his man" and thus in all future dealings, the country would be his ally. Your rival thinks the same way. Hence the dispute. So even if you WANT to be nice and leave it, how can you be sure that the guy who ends up ruling the place isn't your rival's man? So you have a huge reason in staying around and make sure nothing of the sort happens.

Conclusion: Divided States

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#138

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

It is not that hard when soldiers could discover that they had been lied by their own people and sent to die in order for others(that will never risk a finger) to profit.

All wars are full of lies, Roosevelt lied to the American people, "for their own good" of course, as the American public did not want to enter a world war.

The Lusitania was full of weapons as divers discover in 2008, the first American sub to be sinked attacked the Germans first before war(that was never said to American public) and Robert Stinnett investigated about Pearl Harbor and how they already knew about it, the reason there were not air carriers there and the radar "confusion". The soldiers in Hawaii were just pawns to sacrifice in order to win the match.

The same happened in Irak, US government wanted to get this oil, and they just needed a pretext. 20 people from Saudi Arabia(US tyrannical ally) crashing planes against US buildings somewhat became a pretext to invade Irak and Afganistan, countries that are 2000 miles apart from Saudi Arabia, killing millions in the process and thousands of Americans.

Now, Obama is doing the same with Siria. They want to invade a country and they just need to convince the public opinion to support it.

The problem with lies is that when you are outside the system that generates them, they are very easy to discover. People feel betrayed and never trust "big brother", that lies to you for your own benefit, any more.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#139

Post by madaxe »

alan_cx wrote: post #127
madaxe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O2. They censor a really odd selection of stuff.

Sorry, O2 is censoring "political material" in the UK? Are you kidding?

They have been for years, and the list of what I can't browse on 3G only ever grows.

Re: How China brainwashed American POWs using a classic sales technique

#140

Post by willvarfar »

Volpe wrote: post #101
willvarfar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a whole bunch of nations, united.

Are you suggesting that an alliance (between nations) is equivalent to the United Nations?

Eh yes.

Soviet Russia was a founding member of the UN.

An excellent understanding of the UN is in Churchill's "THE SECOND WORLD WAR" books.

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